The sermon for January 11th 2015 is now available on the New Life web-site. In this sermon, which is based on Mark 1:1-11, we have 4 testimonies about baptism and I talk a little about the power of baptism.
Dangerous Faith
According to World Watch List, the 20 most dangerous countries to be a Christian are:
1. North Korea
2. Somalia
3. Iraq
4. Syria
5. Afghanistan
6. Sudan
7. Iran
8. Pakistan
9. Eritrea
10. Nigeria
11. Maldives
12. Saudi Arabia
13. Libya
14. Yemen
15. Uzbekistan
16. Vietnam
17. Central African Republic
18. Qatar
19. Kenya
20. Turkmenistan
India is just outside the top 20 at 21.
We need to be praying for our brethren in these and other nations.
Reflection on Acts 19:1-7
Scripture
When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
Observation
Paul travels to Ephesus where he finds some disciples. He asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they believed, but they reply that they hadn’t even heard of the Holy Spirit. Perplexed, he asks them what baptism they received to which they reply that they received John’s baptism.
Paul explains that John’s baptism was about repentance to prepare for the coming of Jesus. He then baptises them into the name of Jesus. When he lays hands on them they receive the Holy Spirit, prophesying and speaking in tongues.
Application
Baptism isn’t just about repenting of our sins. It is about dying to our old nature and entering fully into the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Part of this experience is receiving the Holy Spirit. For some reason there is often a separation between salvation, baptism in water, and baptism in the Holy Spirit.
God’s intention is that we receive it all- eternity, grace and power in the Holy Spirit.
Once they understood correctly and entered into the full baptism of Christ, the believers in Ephesus received the full baptism in the Holy Spirit, This should be our experience also.
Prayer
Release your Spirit in me, Lord Jesus. May the promise of my water baptism become the fullness of Spirit baptism. Amen.
Persecution of Christians Reached Historic Levels in 2014. Will 2015 Be Worse?
From sojourners
Persecution of Christians Reached Historic Levels in 2014. Will 2015 Be Worse?
by Jonathan Merritt 01-07-2015 | 4:02pm
From imprisonment to torture to beheadings, more Christians worldwide live in fear for their lives than at any time in the modern era.
Open Doors USA’s 2015 “World Watch List.” Image via Open Doors / RNS
Related Reading
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That’s the message from Open Doors USA, which released its annual World Watch List on Jan. 7. Christian persecution reached historic levels in 2014, with approximately 100 million Christians around the world facing possible dire consequences for merely practicing their religion, according to the report. If current trends persist, many believe 2015 could be even worse.
“In regions where Christians are being persecuted as central targets, the trends and issues we track are expanding,” said David Curry, president of Open Doors, a nonprofit that aids persecuted Christians in the most oppressive countries and ranks nations based on the severity of persecution.
North Korea tops Open Doors’ list as the worst oppressor of Christians for the 13th consecutive year, but the list is dominated by African and Middle Eastern nations. Iraq, which experienced the mass displacement of Christians from its northern region, ranked third. Syria was listed fourth, due to the reign of ISIS in that war-torn region. Nigeria ranked 10th, due in part to the more than 1,000 Christians murdered or kidnapped by terrorist groups such as Boko Haram. Also included in the top 10 are Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, and Eritrea.
Even though some Christian-majority nations are experiencing unprecedented levels of discrimination and oppression, Curry said Muslim extremists are the primary drivers of Christian persecution worldwide. This is the case in 40 of the 50 nations on this year’s list.
Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, a global ministry serving persecuted Christians in oppressed nations, agreed with Curry that Muslim extremism is the main source of Christian oppression.
“Wherever there is growing Islamic radicalism, there is growing persecution of Christians,” he said. “Even where moderate Islamic states offer peace — and that is rare — they almost never have freedom to practice their faith and are often marked for death.”
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, said Islamic extremism is not just rampant in rogue terror groups, but also in the governments of nations such as Saudi Arabia (No. 12 on the list) and Egypt (No. 23). This has foreign policy implications, which Shea said has contributed to a failure on the part of the Obama administration to address the calamity adequately.
Curry and Nettleton also expressed disappointment in the administration’s response but said they hope that the appointment of Rabbi David Saperstein as the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom might signal a more aggressive approach. Conservatives criticized Obama for not filling the position sooner, and Saperstein’s critics say the rabbi’s liberal background may not bode well for his willingness to address global persecution aggressively.
Regardless, Open Doors leaders say something must be done to address the mounting persecution. The situation is reaching crisis levels: Christianity faces possible extinction in the Middle East and persecution is growing at alarming rates in Asia and Africa. Curry concluded:
“The 2015 Watch List is a wake-up call to Western countries to protect religious freedoms around the world.”
Jonathan Merritt is senior columnist for Religion News Service and a regular contributor to The Week. Via RNS.
Matt Walsh on the Paris Slaughter
Islam is the Most Violent Religion in the World, But Let’s Keep Calling it ‘Peaceful’ Anyway
This time around, three masked gunmen stormed the offices of a French satirical newspaper, executing 12 people in cold blood, including two police officers. This is the same newspaper that infamously published a cartoon poking fun at the Prophet Mohammed a few years ago, and was promptly greeted with death threats and a Molotov cocktail for their troubles. In fairness, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this attack, but it seems very certain that this was another case of Muslim terrorism. The gunmen took out 12 people while shouting “Allahu Akbhar” and “the Prophet has been avenged.” All of this over some jokes in a magazine.
Can you imagine Christian radicals committing mass murder at The Onion offices because they’re upset about something they found on its website? Can you even fathom such a thing? Probably not, because it never happens. It just never happens. And it’s not like Christians don’t have plenty of provocation. I still remember stumbling upon this lovely little gem from The Onion last year. It’s a hysterical article imagining that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, became a prostitute to make ends meet. Haha?
In this Sept.19, 2012 file photo, Stephane Charbonnier also known as Charb , the publishing director of the satyric weekly Charlie Hebdo, displays the front page of the newspaper as he poses for photographers in Paris. Masked gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar!” stormed the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper Wednesday Jan.7, 2015, killing 12 people including Charb, before escaping. It was France’s deadliest terror attack in at least two decades. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
Yet nobody ever died because of any of that.
Read the rest here
Reflection on Mark 1:4-11
Scripture
“I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.”
Observation
John comes baptising in the wilderness. The whole of Jerusalem and Judea come to him to confess their sins and be baptised.
John tells the people that someone else, much greater than John, is coming. John baptises in water, but He will baptise with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus comes to be baptised by John. As He comes out f the water, the Holy Spirit descends on Him in the form of a dove. A voice from heaven says, “You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”
Application
John baptised with water, but Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit.
Water baptism is about dying to ourselves and living for Christ. Spirit baptism is about dying to my own abilities and letting God’s power work in me and through me to others.
As John received the Holy Spirit at His baptism, we need to receive the Holy Spirit to be able to do the tasks that Jesus calls us to each day.
Unlike water baptism, which is a one-off event, Spirit baptism is a daily process of allowing Holy Spirit to immerse us, surround us, soak deeply into us. We need that daily infilling as surely as we need our daily food.
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit. Fill me. Baptise me. Energise me. Amen.
Today’s Sermon
Carbon Tax Accounting: $24= $5310
The carbon tax was the maddest deed of the Gillard Government, although the Mining Tax comes close. It takes a special kind of stupidity to produce two taxes that cost more to administer than they raised.
The scary bit is that these people still do not get it and could soon be running the country into an even deeper hole- see the comments by Mark Butler at the end of the story.
Jo Nova writes:
Carbon tax cost $5310 a ton. $15 billion to abate almost nothing and cool the world by even less.
If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.
It takes skill to figure out a scheme where you set the price at $24 for something and end up paying $5,000. It could only happen when people are playing with other people’s money. That’s the soft left idea of good maths and good business.
That the Labor-Greens boast that this spectacular failure was a success shows the carbon tax was never about the climate, nor about CO2 or the environment. Follow the money. The purpose of the tax was to reward friends and punish competitors. Anyone dependent on Big-Government is a “friend”, and anyone who can stand on their own two feet is a “polluter” or a “denier”.
If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.
The $15 billion price tag is $670 per Australian, or $2,700 per household of four. The real total is much more (when will the government add up the real bill?), because that tally doesn’t include the money wasted on solar panels, windpower, or the whole “Department of Weather Change”. It doesn’t include millions in scientific research money poured down the sinkhole of climate models that don’t model our climate, nor the advertising, promotion and propaganda of all of the above.
A smart conservative government would add up the whole bill, then spend 0.1% (something like $20 million) paying skeptical scientists to audit, and check the evidence trail. They would trumpet their green credentials. This source of the river of gravy starts with the science. People who care about the poor and the planet would want to get that right.
THE carbon tax cost $5,310 for every tonne of emissions abated during its two years of operation, new government analysis shows.
The release of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory last week shows emissions for the economy, excluding the land sector, fell 1.4 per cent in 2013-14 and 0.8 per cent in 2012-13. When the land sector is included, as is the case under Kyoto accounting, Australia’s emissions fell from 567.1mt in 2012-13 to 563.5mt, a drop of 3.6mt. Between 2011-12 and 2013-14, emissions fell 0.5 per cent or 2.9mt (there was a small rise the previous year).
No one can call this a success. Australian emissions were falling before the carbon tax came in. The big 1.4% fall only came after the figures of the year before were adjusted up. The 0.8% reduction they talk about for the previous 12 months does not exist after the figures were changed, yet they are still citing it. The current count of emissions will most likely be adjusted up itself, and the 1.4% figure is mere noise in the data — in past years the post hoc adjustments have been larger.
Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler told the ABC the report proved Labor’s policies were working. “The National Greenhouse Gas Inventory — dropped by the government in the lead-up to Christmas in an effort to bury the report — showed that the emissions count for the overall year of Labor’s climate policies reduced by 1.4 per cent,” he said.
“That compares to a decline in emissions of 0.8 per cent for the previous 12 months, which shows that Labor policies to reduce emissions were working — to say otherwise is laughable.
Shame the Greens hate the environment.
Prophetic Word: There’s a Flood Coming
Tonight as we were praying, the Lord gave me this word for Narrabri:
A Flood of the Spirit
There is a flood coming, but not of water. The Holy Spirit is coming in a gentle flood in which many will be saved.
Many in the church will be unprepared because they have failed to heed the flood warnings. People will come looking for salvation or healing or forgiveness of sins and the churches will not know what to do.
The flood is coming. Be ready.
Some churches are so tightly tied to their moorings that as the flood levels rise they will not be able to rise with the water and they will sink.
Be flexible and trust me.
While I was looking for Isaiah 60:22 which God gave me in the past as a promise for our church I came across Isaiah 59:10-20
“From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord,
And from the rising of the sun they will revere His glory
For He will come like a pent-up flood
That the breath of the Lord drives along.
The Redeemer will come to Zion
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins” declares the Lord.
Great Moments in Technology
I produced my first training video today- 15 minutes of me talking about stuff that ministers need to know when conducting weddings. Riveting stuff.
Producing it was a real patience tester for me!
We bought a video camera a year ago so I thought that would do the job- except the batteries were flat and the SD card has disappeared.
Then I remembered my trusty Canon camera does pretty good video. So I set it up and found that indeed it does work well.
I recorded my thing, and came up with a 15 minute video. The phone only rang once in the middle of it, so not too bad for interruptions.
Then the technical problems started piling in on me.
The file wouldn’t download to the computer via USB. I had to remove the memory card and put it into the card reader.
I wanted to trim off some bits at the beginning and the end- you know, where I reach to the camera to turn it on and then cough because that’s always the first thing you do when you’re recording a video.
That bit took over 2 hours. I tried several programs, and not one of them would simply let me select a section and hit “delete”. One of them would let me do that but then have the sound and the video out of sync. Another program told me “I’m not going to do the sound on this one.” Grrr.
Eventually I figured it out with some help from Mr Google. But somewhere along the line I deleted the “Documents” folder on my computer. Luckily I am fanatical about weekly backups, so I only lost a few vital documents. I have got no idea how that could even have happened.
Now I had a .avi file that was over 2 GB- way too big to upload to Youtube or Vimeo (and there’s something else I had to research and make a choice about!).
It turns out that handbrake, which is brilliant for ripping DVDs is also pretty good at taking your avi file and converting it into a mp4 or similar. My 2 G file shrank to 220 MB which is slowly crawling up through the tubes to Vimeo. We seem to have really slow internet this evening- but that’s just another annoyance to overcome. 🙂
So what I thought would be a great way to deliver training was a little more complicated than I expected. The learning curve was indeed steep.
Next time I might have some space in my brain to add some captions and maybe an opening clip of some sort. For now, I’m happy to have got to the end of the project.
